Surgical or medical gloves are manufactured by dipping hand-shaped glove forms into a liquid bath containing an elastomeric material such as a rubber latex or a vinyl plastisol. The forms are withdrawn from the bath, and a coating or film of the elastomeric material is retained on the form. The elastomeric material is allowed to cure, usually with the application of heat, and the gloves are subsequently stripped from the forms for packaging and distribution.
The glove forms are made in the shape of a hand and are mounted on racks. The racks containing the forms are conveyed through various stations to apply the elastomeric material to the form to wash the coated forms to remove undesirable ingredients from the elastomer on the forms and to an oven where the elastomer is cured.
Some surgical or medical gloves are manufactured with a rolled cuff or circumferential bead around the cuff to aid in donning the glove and in preventing the glove from rolling down the wrist when in use. Other surgical and medical gloves are manufactured with a patterned wrist or cuff which inhibits cuff roll-down, which has been recognized as a problem with beaded cuffs. The pattern of the wrist portion of such gloves is usually made by providing the desired pattern on the glove forms used in making the gloves. The forms employed to make the patterned cuff are considerably more expensive than a smooth glove form. The patterned gloves are also difficult to strip from the form because of adhesion of the glove film to the form in the interstices in the pattern on the form. Patterned gloves of this type are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,821,718 and 4,095,293. The previously available ring rolling mechanisms were complex mechanisms which moved around the glove form in making the ring rolled cuff, or in which the glove form was rotated around the ring rolling mechanism. U.S. Pat. No. 2,482,418 discloses a ring rolling mechanism of the latter type. Because of the relative motion of the ring rolling mechanism and the forms, the individual glove forms were separated from each other on the rack by a considerable distance to allow the ring rolling mechanism to move around the form.
The separation of the forms on the rack to allow for the ring rolling mechanism reduced the number of glove forms that could be mounted on a rack. Since the glove making process is essentially a batch process, the overall production rate of the process is limited by the number of glove forms that can be mounted on a rack.